Picture this: You receive an email from a fellow business owner. This person is someone you know. Perhaps you are members of the same organization or enjoyed a friendly round of golf with them. So, when he sends you an email inviting you to a conference at a golf club, you don’t hesitate to click on the link. In an instant, your computer screen goes black. You rush to your CTO for help and discover your entire business network is down. You call your friend to warn him about the link. “I didn’t send that email,” he says. You realize you’ve fallen prey to a sophisticated social engineering attack with devastating consequences for your business data.
What is a social engineering attack?
Social engineering attacks exploit human psychology to manipulate people into giving access to their computer systems or divulging confidential information. These cyberattacks can involve impersonating a trusted person or organization or creating a sense of urgency to trick individuals so they can gain information or access they should not have. It’s an intricate web of psychological manipulation.
Cybercriminals employ various methods for social engineering attacks:
- Phishing – Sending fraudulent communications, usually through email, phone, and text to steal login, financial, and other sensitive information.
- Pretexting – Creating a false scenario to engage a target.
- Baiting – Offering something enticing to entrap a victim
- Tailgating – Gaining access to a restricted area by following an authorized person.
What is the difference between social engineering attacks and hacking?
While social engineering attacks focus on manipulating human behavior to gain unauthorized access to systems, hacking, on the other hand, exploits technical vulnerabilities in software or hardware to gain access to those systems. An IBM report explains the differences between the two: “Because social engineering uses psychological manipulation and exploits human error or weakness rather than technical or digital system vulnerabilities, it is sometimes called ‘human hacking.’”
Cybercriminals play the long game with social engineering attacks. They often take months to identify and research their targets and find vulnerabilities in their security protocols. Then, they spend even more time building a relationship with their targets and earning their trust, priming them to give access to their business network or get their sensitive data outright. Once cybercriminals have sensitive business data, such as login information, they have keys to your network. Unsurprisingly, social engineering attacks are often the first step of larger-scale malware attacks, such as ransomware.
As you can see, the hackers behind these cyberattacks are far more sophisticated than the comical con artists with outlandish offers we associate with phishing. That’s why companies must prevent and prepare for data loss from cybercrimes like social engineering attacks, system failure, and human error.
Security Awareness Training must go beyond telling employees not to click on suspicious links. It must work with a robust backup strategy consisting of air-gapped, immutable, and off-site and cloud storage, such as Ozone IT Services’ Backup-as-a-Service solutions (BaaS) that safeguard business data. As our fictional business owner in the example taught us, an email from a business colleague or even a phone call from a coworker about work might be a malicious message from a cybercriminal.
Employees at small businesses (SMBs) receive 350% more social engineering attacks than those at larger businesses. Your critical data is secure with Ozone IT Service’s Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solutions. We create redundancies with hybrid cloud and off-site storage. Even if your system goes down, your data is safe until you can get it back up-and-running. Contact Ozone IT Services today.
